Quotes by Philosophers - Page 14

Do not be too timid and squeamish. ... All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
Socrates
You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.
Denis Diderot
Choose a subject equal to your abilities think carefully what your shoulders may refuse and what they are capable of bearing.
Horace
When men are rightfully occupied then their amusement grows out of their work as the color petals out of a fruitful garden.
John Ruskin
The weakest among us has a gift however seemingly trivial which is peculiar to him and which worthily used will be a gift also to his race.
John Ruskin
Nature arms each man with some faculty which enables him to do easily some feat impossible to any other.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The great law of culture: Let each become all that he was created capable of being.
Thomas Carlyle
The greatest achievement of the human spirit is to live up to one's opportunities and make the most of one's resources.
Vauvenargues
The high prize of life the crowning fortune of a man is to be born with a bias to some pursuit which finds him in employment and happiness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Each citizen should play his part in the community according to his individual gifts.
Plato
Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless speed up. If you become winded slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then when you're no longer thinking ahead each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself.
Robert M. Pirsig
Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means and so make for themselves different modes of life.
Aristotle
A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
All men have happiness as their object: there is no exception. However different the means they employ they aim at the same end.
Blaise Pascal
All life is the struggle the effort to be itself.
José Ortega y Gasset
Choose always the way that seems the best however rough it may be custom will soon render it easy and agreeable.
Pythagoras
What does reason demand of a man? A very easy thing-to live in accord with his own nature.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be one's own self
Michel de Montaigne
It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself.
Thomas Paine
With begging and scrambling we find very little but with being true to ourselves we find a great deal more.
Rabindranath Tagore
Misfortunes occur only when a man is false.... Events circumstances etc. have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown.
Henry David Thoreau
Seek out that particular mental attitude which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive along with which comes the inner voice which says "This is the real me " and when you have found that attitude follow it.
William James
This is the chief thing: be not perturbed for all things are according to the nature of the universal.
Marcus Aurelius
Let them know a real man who lives as he was meant to live.
Marcus Aurelius
Do you know that disease and death must needs overtake us no matter what we are doing? ... What do you wish to be doing when it overtakes you?... If you have anything better to be doing when you are so overtaken get to work on that.
Epictetus
Those who love a cause are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it.
Simone Weil
People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not.
Giacomo Leopardi
Live as you will wish to have lived when you are dying.
Christian Furchtegott Gellert
Of all the paths a man could strike into there is at any given moment a best path ... a thing which here and now it were of all things wisest for him to do ... to find this path and walk in it is the one thing needful for him.
Thomas Carlyle
Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries unite!
Karl Marx
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
Henry David Thoreau
Ah if the rich were rich as the poor fancy riches!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Revolutions are not about trifles but spring from trifles.
Aristotle
By gnawing through a dyke even a rat may drown a nation.
Edmund Burke
Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.
Lewis Mumford
All reform except a moral one will prove unavailing.
Thomas Carlyle
Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal and equals that they may be superior.
Aristotle
Not actual suffering but the hope of better things incites people to revolt.
Eric Hoffer
Revenge is an inhuman word.
Seneca
In taking revenge a man is but equal to his enemy but in passing it over he is his superior.
Sir Francis Bacon
A nation without the means of reform is without the means of survival.
Edmund Burke
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the roots.
Henry David Thoreau
Every reform was once a private opinion and when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The role of a retired person is no longer to possess one.
Simone de Beauvoir
Dismiss the old horse in good time lest he fail in the lists and the spectators laugh.
Horace
Republics are brought to their ends by luxury monarchies by poverty.
Charles Montesquieu
No sensible person ever made an apology.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Religion is the opium of the people.
Karl Marx
There was never law or sect or opinion did so much magnify goodness as the Christian religion doth.
Sir Francis Bacon
The world is my country all mankind are my brethren and to do good is my religion.
Thomas Paine
His religion at best is an anxious wish - like that of Rebelais a great Perhaps.
Thomas Carlyle
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors and also to love our enemies probably because they are generally the same people.
G.K. Chesterton
My atheism like that of Spinoza is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of their human interests.
George Santayana
There is a crack in everything God has made.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Atheism is rather in the lip than in the heart of Man.
Francis Bacon
Religion is the opiate of the people.
Karl Marx
Zen is a way of liberation concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous but what is.
Alan Watts
Each religion by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.
George Santayana
Most people believe that the Christian commandments are intentionally a little too severe - like setting a clock half an hour ahead to make sure of not being late in the morning.
Søren Kierkegaard